Importing skills

Shipping a Mac app means solving problems that have nothing to do with your app: notarization, release checks, certificates. Somebody — maybe you, last project — already solved them. This chapter imports that knowledge into 4Notice as skills, from a skills repo.

If the concepts are new, the Speccify section explains them; here we just do it.

1. Add the source

In iKanban AI’s skills tab, under Sources, add the repo by URL (or speccify add in the terminal). For 4Notice the source is a private GitHub repo of skill bundles; access rides on the same gh credentials git already uses. The project remembers its dependencies in speccify.yaml:

dependencies:
  git+https://github.com/<you>/<skills-repo>#skills/macos-notarize-tauri: ^1.0
  git+https://github.com/<you>/<skills-repo>#skills/release-checks: ^1.0

The repo URL is the identity, tags are the versions, a bundle is a directory — git+<url>#<path>.

2. Import = expand

Importing a skill from the sources list runs the expand step and ends with a task list handed to the agent. What actually landed in 4Notice from two requested skills:

.agent/skills/macos-notarize-tauri/     ← requested
.agent/skills/apple-developer-id-cert/  ← came along: the first one `uses` it
.agent/skills/release-checks/           ← requested
.agent/tools/check-entitlements/        TOOL.md + fixtures
.agent/tools/check-plist-keys/          TOOL.md + fixtures
.agent/tools/orphan-strings/            TOOL.md + fixtures
.agent/tools/verify-signatures/         TOOL.md (contract only — see below)
.agent/speccify/expansions.yaml         ← provenance

Note the second line: dependencies between skills resolve at expand time — macos-notarize-tauri declares it builds on apple-developer-id-cert, so that skill arrives as its own normal skill beside it. Nothing refers back to the source anymore.

3. Execute: the agent implements the tools

The tool folders arrive with contracts and fixtures but no implementations for your machine — that’s the point. One agent run implemented the three release-checks tools (macos.py, macos.sh) from their contracts.

And one tool deliberately stayed a contract: verify-signatures won’t be needed until notarization, so it isn’t implemented yet. Import doesn’t oblige you to build everything on day one — an unimplemented tool is visible as such in the tools tab and in the provenance record, not forgotten.

4. Evaluate: check, then trust

speccify tool check check-entitlements   # → verified
speccify tool check check-plist-keys     # → verified
speccify tool check orphan-strings       # → verified

Each check runs the contract’s examples against the fresh implementation (how that works). After that, the agent uses these skills like any local one — and logs an agent_run line in the ticket history when it does.

The whole import was one atomic commit in 4Notice, subject “Import skills from speccify-first-test and implement their tools” — skills, tools, fixtures, provenance, 3× verified, all in one reviewable step.

Next: the direction that makes this a cycle — exporting what 4Notice taught you.